the thump
by sea-salt kisses
Summary: When the golden boy comes back, it's too late. — Axel, Roxas


******the thump.  
**_uploaded: 9/9/12. revised: 4/12/13._

When they first build me up from the flatness of dirt beneath me, all that exists are thuds and vibrations, the creak of beams bent under dictated pressure and the ticklish feel of sawdust displacing in the air.

The first noise I learn is the thump – the thump means effort, the thump means creation. The thump means that my body will extend to enclose in a tight space with gleaming floorboards and a speckled ceiling, that I will shield those inside of me and keep them from harm. My body cocoons outward until I'm complete, my corners welded tight and stalwart. My creators bring a wooden frame inside of me, a table and white cabinets. When they're gone, they leave nothing but the smell of their sweat and an aura of emptiness. For three years, I wait.

The next thump arrives in the form of a man – taller than the ones who erected me, thin with black smudges of coal beneath his eyes, hair spiked and perfectly cemented like the apoxy beneath his feet. He has a smile that curves with protracted dictation and alabaster teeth. He brings with him sheets of paper bound with metal whirls – holds ink-bearing devices in his hands like the fingers of a beloved. For a long time after the thumps he makes hauling in his desk and his books, the only sound I hear is the scritch-scratch of the device's tiny metal piece against vacant sheets. This, I'm taught, is another form of creation. It makes the man smile sometimes, makes him weep and rage and slam his fists against me. Sometimes it leaves my protection and sometimes it stays, buried beneath paperweights or the brunt of his elbows.

The next thump comes in the form of a body against me, a boy smaller than the man with hair that curls and catches fire in the light that streams through my openings. They touch their mouths and their hands and their hips, press together and raise noises that the people outside of me complain about later. The man presses the boy hard against the wall, pressing his hands past the strands that cover his body until they're revealed, skin pink and flushing. Their thumps fill my core in a way it's never been before, and I feel happiness.

When the boy leaves, the man smiles and presses trembling fingers to his temples, lips pulled over teeth and hands gripping tight to his sheets of paper as he pours himself across them. The man's hands rarely touch me anymore, not to beat against me in the strange feeling from before. The angry thump leaves, replaced by the one that rises when the golden boy comes around.

For a long time, the man does little but fill the paper with black swirls and meticulously-placed dashes, telling words of the boy and of the full feeling that brims when he comes around; what it all means. He leaves in the morning and comes back at night to pin things against me, circling phrases with his ink tool and worrying his lips. Soon, it's a struggle to see him through all the papers he's attached to me, but he keeps the space near my switch open, and we both wait with baited breath for the golden boy to return.

The next thump I learn is one that I wish I could forget. The thump of the man's things against me, harsh swings that bruise me and lacerate my flesh until it crumbles to the floor. The golden boy is angry, and the man does nothing to stop him, letting the words fly along with scattering pages that litter the floor with feelings – his own and someone else's. The sound of my lips clamping shut is what rouses the man. It's quiet and still for all of a minute – air tight like too much tension on an extension line. And I learn another sort of thump – the thump the man makes when he breaks, collapses at my feet and grips himself tight. The thump of his insides against my baseboards, rhythmic and as tumultuous as rending steel.

For a long time, my insides grow stagnant. The lack of the golden boy brings about less time with the man scratching colour onto his lined sheets. He stares straight at me from time to time with eyes defunct, unseeing. Eventually he throws the sheets out – places his books in a cardboard box and hauls them to my borders. He leaves them on the sidewalk and watches dispassionately as the fruit of his creation is pieced apart. He watches people approach with soft, gentle movements, picking up his sheets with the tenderness they would an infant. He watches the others cry over his words, watches them grow angry, and scared. He watches realization dawn and fingers detangle and eyes narrow and lips twist cruelly downward.

He comes back to me with a length of rope and one last blank sheet.

He writes on it for a while, until the desk beneath it stains harsh and the scritch-scratch throbs between my rafters and beams with a quickening pace. He signs it with a word that he still means and turns away, links the rope through my crown and ties a loop. He moves his chair beneath it, the same one he's spent years in crafting his words. It was another instrument that used to thump when the golden boy visited; hovering shaky and warm over the man with sounds rising.

The man stands on the chair's trembling legs and he places the loop around his neck. His eyes never leave mine – their colour green like unripened apples, open and cavernous like a quiet hallway; painfully cold, but not empty. They brim like the words that used to swirl inside him, rising along the slick insides of his throat like bile. His eyes are full, so full they're breaking, so full that they drip down over the ink that clings to his cheeks, in solemn testament to his words.

The last thump I learn is the one of loss. The chair scrapes across my skin and his body hangs limp and dangling from mine like a ball-weight. His feet brush mine with a frenzied thump that quickly stills, until there is nothing.

The thump means creation; life. The thump means destruction; deceit. The thump is birth. The thump is quietus. These are the words the man sought to find, to express.

When the golden boy comes back – it's too late. The man is long gone, his presence lingering in half-remembered tinges – the splashes of ink on my floorboards, the indentions near my switch. The golden boy doesn't say a word as he walks to the chair, sits down, and stares me right in the eyes.

There is mutual blame, and there is regret in his eyes – eyes that are full in much the same way the man's were when he stood in the exact same spot. When he leaves, he takes with him the final dregs of what once existed – the feeling, the fullness. Until they wrench me apart and reassign my parts to another assemblage – no one else enters me.

And there is no more sound – only the aching, drawing silence of beams shifting closer to the earth, and the stretch of a body around the inertia of vacant space.


End file.
